Sen. Tom Coburn doesn't understand; grants for game projects are far from wasteful.

In any sufficiently sized government, it's going to be pretty easy to cherry-pick examples of programs that seem wasteful or unnecessary. So it's not too surprising that Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is able to do just that each year with his headline-grabbing "Waste Book," listing 100 examples of extraneous spending in the US government.

It's hard not to laugh at some of the more ridiculous-sounding entries on this year's list [PDF], from a "sidewalk to nowhere" to free bus rides for Super Bowl attendees. But when the Waste Book deals with federal grants for a number of video game-related projects, it seems to write them off without considering the important scientific and artistic goals the projects achieve. While Coburn appears to believe it's self-evident that anything related to games couldn't possibly be worthy of federal funding, talking to the people behind these projects shows taxpayer dollars are going to much more than mindless entertainment.

Take the Waste Book's description of Prom Week, a research project out of the University of California Santa Cruz that tries to model the complex social interactions among kids in a high school leading up to the big dance. A caption for a screenshot in the Waste Book notes derisively that the game "probably won't be nominated for a Nobel Prize," and another says that "taxpayers of all ages can relive prom night every day" (implying much more risque content than the game actually contains). But aside from these jabs, there's no substantive argument as to why such a project doesn't deserve its $516,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

We suppose it's supposed to be apparent that spending money on a game about high school students is an obvious waste. But there's important science behind the light concept. "In the case of Prom Week, we're figuring out how to build computational models of social interaction, allowing players to explore the social consequences of their actions," said Dr. Michael Mateas, director of the Center for Games and Playable Media and UC Santa Cruz. "Once you've developed a new capability like this, it can be used for all kinds of purposes, including education and training."

It might not look like it, but there are important computer science ideas behind the gameplay in Prom Week.

It's the training aspects that might be of most interest to those who, like Coburn, apparently don't think the public is getting its money's worth out of the Prom Week grant. Mateas says Prom Week's social modeling technology has since been adapted for use in a scenario-based simulation used to help soldiers and police "cope in unfamiliar cultural contexts and [help] them to get their jobs done in a way that minimizes escalation and loss of life." Another project is using the Prom Week technology to help prevent bullying among middle school children.

Prom Week isn't the only project to hide substantial public good behind seemingly trivial gaming applications. Take the University of Utah's NSF-funded effort to create a controller that provides accurate tactile feedback using thumbsticks that gently stretch the skin in a specific direction. The Waste Book points out that the controller can be used to simulate the recoil from a virtual gun, or give early warning that players are about to be tackled in a football game. But project creator Dr. William Provancher tells Ars that the same underlying technology is being applied to things like in-car navigation cues that don't require looking at a screen and mobile phone controls for the visually impaired.

There are also potential military applications. "Turns out that some folks in the military have expressed interest in my lab's game controller for providing an improved human interface for soldiers to control mobile robots and UAVs," Provancher said. "Since today's soldiers are of the 'gaming' generation, game controllers are sometimes a preferred human interface for soldiers to interact with."

Provancher also noted that the $1.5 million that the Waste Book cites as paying for the controller actually went toward the underlying fundamental research into perception and cognition behind the project. The actual controller prototype was developed by students using University of Utah funds, at no cost to the federal government.

"The reality is that very little 'government' money has gone to the development of my lab's game controller," Provancher said. "So, while I'm not particularly happy about being included in the senator's report, it's pretty clear to me that whoever compiled the report for the senator doesn't really understand what my NSF grants are supporting and has not focused on the breadth of research supported and the resulting benefits to society of this research. But clearly if one sets forth to focus on 'the negative,' one can always find what they are looking for."

Funding Games as Art

Enlarge/ Is Walden, A Game art? Yes. Is it worth federal funding? Hmmm...

Games aren't just useful as scientific simulations, of course. They're also works of expression that just recently got full First Amendment protection in a landmark Supreme Court ruling. The National Endowment for the Arts has come around to the same line of thinking, providing grants to a number of game-related projects noted as wasteful by Coburn.

Of course, it's harder to objectively justify federal funding for this kind of artistic patronage, and it could easily be argued that the government should get out of the art-funding business entirely. That seems to be the Waste Book's thinking when it suggests that a $50,000 for the Games for Change festival—which focuses on games that have a direct social impact—was a "laudable" effort that "would have been better spent providing direct help to the poor, such as antiretroviral drugs for many HIV patients on waiting lists for drugs from the Ryan White program."

That seems like a pretty high standard of comparison for such a small grant—one that a wide variety of important government programs might fail. But that doesn't mean the Games for Change grant failed to reflect the growing importance of socially relevant games or of a festival that has grown from under 100 attendees in 2004 to over 800 attendees this year. "The [NEA] support underscores that games are a form of media spanning a diverse range of interests and disciplines, from the artistic to the cultural to the educational," Michelle Byrd, co-president of Games for Change, told Ars. "NEA support of games, and events such as ours, assists in bringing validation to the form as a whole, in particular the appreciation of games as an art form."

"Play is by no means a frivolous subject of study," added Chris Bensch, vice president of collections and chief curator at Rochester's Strong Museum of Play. The museum received a $150,000 grant to put together an exhibit chronicling three decades of American games (including video games). "Not only is play essential to human growth and development, but what we play, how we play, and the things we play with tell an important story about our nation’s changing history and culture."

Some may argue that games are much more frivolous and disposable than the other, more "serious" arts that the NEA usually funds. But those arguments fall apart quickly when looking at Walden, A Game, a USC project that transforms Thoreau's classic meditation on nature and solitude into an interactive space for quiet reflection.

"The game has value to anyone interested in understanding the life and writings of this iconic American author," says team leader Tracy Fullerton. "Hopefully, players will be inspired by his ideas about natural science, philosophy, and the importance of living a balanced life; perhaps it will lead them to read the original book, or perhaps to look at how they live their own lives."

"Receiving a grant from the NEA has made the development team very proud. This project has been a labor of love for several years, and we are grateful for the recognition of the NEA that the video game form is one that is now coming into its own as an art form."

Video games are great. Many are artistic. Many are functional. They are undoubtedly changing the way that future generations behave in social situations. They improve logic and deductive reasoning in capacities we haven't seen before. That doesn't mean the government needs to be in the business of spending tax dollars on that section.

The federal government, in my little-L-libertarian opinion, is designed to handle the functions that the private sector cannot, either through practical necessity as a function of social or economic governance or an inability for the private sector to self-regulate because of market imbalances. The video game industry is 1) not a function of social/economic governance, and 2) quite capable of self-regulation.

The practical benefits that these government projects have created, are they well worth the cost? More importantly, are they acting at least as efficiently as the private sector at providing improvement? How does America's Army stack up to Call of Duty or Medal of Honor in terms of integrating military and video games? If the government is developing game controllers for unmanned recon operations, why do so many remote vehicles use an X-Box controller instead?

Sure, we care about video games. A lot of people care about Sesame Street and PBS. Others care about public accessibility to healthcare. But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period. That means people have to make sacrifices about government funding regarding the things that they care about. And video games, like Sesame Street and healthcare and numerous other "important" issues, aren't going to disappear just because the federal government isn't funding them. Some may stagnate, and others may be worse hit than others, but I just can't buy that video games deserve immunity from federal budget cuts because of their paramount importance to American federalism.

I'm not the biggest Romney fan, but I do have some respect for how he claimed he would analyze government spending: "Is this program/expenditure worth borrowing from China for?"

Of course, it's still easy to disagree on the answer for any given expenditure, but I think it makes a good starting point to thinking about these things.

On the other hand, analyses like the Waste Book tend to so oversimplify that I think they can easily backfire. Isn't there enough government waste to focus only on the ones that a site like Ars would be unable to defend (i.e. a site that doesn't have a particular political viewpoint, but tends to defend the advancement of science and technology)? When they mix defensible expenditures in with the indefensible ones, they make it too easy to dismiss the whole exercise.

EDIT: I'm not saying I agree with every one of these expenditures, but Ars certainly raises some points that are being glossed over or ignored in the Waste Book's analysis.

I'm sure a benefit could be derived from any kind of government spending. The question we have to ask though is did this have to be funded through tax payers?

IIRC There are plenty of research universities in the US that could of easily funded something like this. Many of which are privately funded. If the benefits were as great as this article implies than I can't imagine why a university wouldn't want it's name tied to it.

This article also fails to justify such a huge price tag for such a game. Was 516k really needed to fund something like this? Is this anymore of an advanced game than the handful of other simulation games done by bored college students in their free time? On a budget of Taco Bell and Monsters at that?

It's really hard to see much of this money actually going to create this simulation and not lining someones pockets.

I'm not the biggest Romney fan, but I do have some respect for how he claimed he would analyze government spending: "Is this program/expenditure worth borrowing from China for?"

Of course, it's still easy to disagree on the answer for any given expenditure, but I think it makes a good starting point to thinking about these things.

On the other hand, analyses like the Waste Book tend to so oversimplify that I think they can easily backfire. Isn't there enough government waste to focus only on the ones that a site like Ars would be unable to defend (i.e. a site that doesn't have a particular political viewpoint, but tends to defend the advancement of science and technology)? When they mix defensible expenditures in with the indefensible ones, they make it too easy to dismiss the whole exercise.

I think Obama ran on going "line by line" in 2008. The China thing is a nice thought, although I'd like a Presidential candidate to understand how much of our debt [doesn't] comes from China.

According to http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/repo ... xpense.htm, we have paid $454,393,280,417.03 in interest alone to service the existing US Federal debt. I don't deny that there are plenty of good programs out there. But too many people treat Federal government money as "free money", not realizing that it comes from taxpayers through various taxes paid either directly or indirectly. What needs to be done is to go through the budget line by line and ask "Is this absolutely necessary, or is it just nice to have?"

Or, to put it another way, if your neighbor's household income was $55,000 per year,but they were spending $96,500, you might question where they are spending their money.

I'm sure a benefit could be derived from any kind of government spending. The question we have to ask though is did this have to be funded through tax payers?

IIRC There are plenty of research universities in the US that could of easily funded something like this. Many of which are privately funded. If the benefits were as great as this article implies than I can't imagine why a university wouldn't want it's name tied to it.

The obvious source of research funds is the gaming industry itself. The gaming industry has been trying for decades to look respectable. Comics and cartoons grew up, and now it's games turn.

The U.S. budget deficit was $1.299 trillion last year, and I'm sure that for every dollar, you can find someone, somewhere, who thinks it was a dollar wisely spent. Eventually we're going to have to start making some choices, and "all of the above" won't be an option. My gut (and U.S. demographic data) tells me that when it comes to funding Medicare or the NEA, Medicare will win. And it doesn't matter that the NEA is a "drop in the bucket", because there are tens of thousands of drops in the bucket that will be low on the priority list in the grand scheme of things.

With that said, I am in that group mentioned that thinks the government should get out of the business of funding art.

Interesting position to take especially when one reads an Ars copyright thread and that very suggestion of the patronage model comes up, either in a historical context, or as some kind of solution since supposedly current models are "old and busted".

I think the fundamental mistake that is being made in associating "federal funding for games" is that these aren't games that are made for the sole purpose for being entertaining - they are often made with some kind of social or educational phenomena in mind.

Let's take a moment to break down the funds, though. The $516,000 given to a project funds the project for three years (so that's $172K a year, or two full-time programmers). As most research universities take off at least 40% of Federal funds off-the-top as indirect costs (basically the University takes it and does stuff with it to pay people, improve buildings, pay bills, etc.) the researchers are left with around $86,000 a year, which is enough to pay for the salary and tuition of two graduate students.

A second issue is that if you give the money to "ordinary game programmers" (of which you'd get two programmers over three years, or six programmers for one year), they might not develop anything with the greater good of society in mind. In the case of the High School Prom game, the game is simply a medium to deliver how they can test their theories of social interaction and consequence. Many games are devoted to studying how children or adults interact with computers, how to use games to increase diversity in various subgroups, or to explore aspects of computer-human interaction. Unfortunately the game industry doesn't really want to invest in this kind of stuff things like societal impact and diversity are not usually related to their bottom line. (Note alternatively that the game industry DOES tend to invest in technical contributions like graphics research).

I'm not the biggest Romney fan, but I do have some respect for how he claimed he would analyze government spending: "Is this program/expenditure worth borrowing from China for?"

Sigh. China only owns 1.3T of our 15T in debt, while about 10.2T of that is owned by US interests (local, state, federal governments, pensions, unions, corporations, etc). A quick googling didn't reveal to me who is lending us the marginal dollar though if you have any stats for that I'd be very interested.

Video games are great. Many are artistic. Many are functional. They are undoubtedly changing the way that future generations behave in social situations. They improve logic and deductive reasoning in capacities we haven't seen before. That doesn't mean the government needs to be in the business of spending tax dollars on that section.

The federal government, in my little-L-libertarian opinion, is designed to handle the functions that the private sector cannot, either through practical necessity as a function of social or economic governance or an inability for the private sector to self-regulate because of market imbalances. The video game industry is 1) not a function of social/economic governance, and 2) quite capable of self-regulation.

The practical benefits that these government projects have created, are they well worth the cost? More importantly, are they acting at least as efficiently as the private sector at providing improvement? How does America's Army stack up to Call of Duty or Medal of Honor in terms of integrating military and video games? If the government is developing game controllers for unmanned recon operations, why do so many remote vehicles use an X-Box controller instead?

Sure, we care about video games. A lot of people care about Sesame Street and PBS. Others care about public accessibility to healthcare. But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period. That means people have to make sacrifices about government funding regarding the things that they care about. And video games, like Sesame Street and healthcare and numerous other "important" issues, aren't going to disappear just because the federal government isn't funding them. Some may stagnate, and others may be worse hit than others, but I just can't buy that video games deserve immunity from federal budget cuts because of their paramount importance to American federalism.

I think the fundamental mistake that is being made in associating "federal funding for games" is that these aren't games that are made for the sole purpose for being entertaining - they are often made with some kind of social or educational phenomena in mind.

Let's take a moment to break down the funds, though. The $516,000 given to a project funds the project for three years (so that's $172K a year, or two full-time programmers). As most research universities take off at least 40% of Federal funds off-the-top as indirect costs (basically the University takes it and does stuff with it to pay people, improve buildings, pay bills, etc.) the researchers are left with around $86,000 a year, which is enough to pay for the salary and tuition of two graduate students.

A second issue is that if you give the money to "ordinary game programmers" (of which you'd get two programmers over three years, or six programmers for one year), they might not develop anything with the greater good of society in mind. In the case of the High School Prom game, the game is simply a medium to deliver how they can test their theories of social interaction and consequence. Many games are devoted to studying how children or adults interact with computers, how to use games to increase diversity in various subgroups, or to explore aspects of computer-human interaction. Unfortunately the game industry doesn't really want to invest in this kind of stuff things like societal impact and diversity are not usually related to their bottom line. (Note alternatively that the game industry DOES tend to invest in technical contributions like graphics research).

Still doesn't really explain why this couldn't be funded by a university itself. Universities fund research projects all the time many of which may never have any real financial benefit but simply serve to forward human knowledge.

I guess I just really don't see the justification. I find it hard to believe that the information resulting from this was so life changing that the US just had to dive in and fund it.

Considering that we just spent a trillion dollars bailing out a banking industry that fraudulently misled investors, I can say that I find "outrage" over any funding of arts to be disingenuous at best. The idea that we have to "borrow from China" to fund these programs is a farse. After that last trillion dollar scandal, can anyone explain why the banks are given the right to create money that the government must dutifully pay interest on? The government shouldn't have to borrow, the treasury should instead print the money. Nor should we be putting up with running deficits year after year so that we can slavishly support trust fund kids like Mitt Romney.

Rather than cherry pick small, and I mean microscopically small parts of the budget to get upset over, why don't we instead get upset over the larger trends. That trend is that we have a top tax bracket that is lower than any time Reagan was in office, combined with a class of 1%ers that feel their only obligation is to extract as much wealth as they possibly can before leaving. What exactly is the sense in lowering taxes on these people? They've demonstrated that if they aren't taxed, not only will they not willingly give, but they won't even willingly participate unless everything is set up perfectly for them. Sorry, but having it easy isn't a billionaire's birthright, nor is living in the wealthiest country in the world, benefiting enormously from it's infrastructure, while dodging taxes left and right. I think it's high time we bring back the 94% tax rate. That will balance the budget, very quickly. Another option is to use the same property seizure laws that we use on drug-traffickers, and apply them to companies that offshore.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

Considering that we just spent a trillion dollars bailing out a banking industry that fraudulently misled investors, I can say that I find "outrage" over any funding of arts to be disingenuous at best. The idea that we have to "borrow from China" to fund these programs is a farse. After that last trillion dollar scandal, can anyone explain why the banks are given the right to create money that the government must dutifully pay interest on? The government shouldn't have to borrow, the treasury should instead print the money. Nor should we be putting up with running deficits year after year so that we can slavishly support trust fund kids like Mitt Romney.

Rather than cherry pick small, and I mean microscopically small parts of the budget to get upset over, why don't we instead get upset over the larger trends. That trend is that we have a top tax bracket that is lower than any time Reagan was in office, combined with a class of 1%ers that feel their only obligation is to extract as much wealth as they possibly can before leaving. What exactly is the sense in lowering taxes on these people? They've demonstrated that if they aren't taxed, not only will they not willingly give, but they won't even willingly participate unless everything is set up perfectly for them. Sorry, but having it easy isn't a billionaire's birthright, nor is living in the wealthiest country in the world, benefiting enormously from it's infrastructure, while dodging taxes left and right. I think it's high time we bring back the 94% tax rate. That will balance the budget, very quickly. Another option is to use the same property seizure laws that we use on drug-traffickers, and apply them to companies that offshore.

So many things wrong with this post. First it follows the assumption of just because people complain about small waste that they don't care about big waste. You can only beat a dead horse for so long before you have to move on to something else. Big government waste is obvious the small stuff not so much.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

The problem is that governments use that little raise taxes strategy far more often than they actually cut spending. Resulting in numerous other fees and taxing absolutely everything.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

Arguably a lot of these things are drops in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. That being said, there are a lot of other areas of the budget that can be trimmed of much more "fat". For example, military spending (who needs that many air conditioned tents?). How about those subsidies for "clean" coal, which by the way produces a byproduct of some really nasty stuff. Politicians will not touch these issues even though they are much larger and much more obvious. They won't touch them because the industries behind them will bury them alive if they do. So the easy targets will get picked on even though their relevance on the overall budget is negligible in comparison to some of these much larger targets.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

raise taxes and take more money out of the private sector which is the exact opposite of what the Fed has been trying to do for the last 4 years. Thats not going to be too productive.

its time to get our financial house in order. we can't borrow at the rate that we are and until we get that under control we're going to scare the crap out of every business and investor who are the real drivers of our growth (I am one of them).

I'm surprised to see so many posts against, but even they seem to fixate on the debt. As if it would be okay to spend this money otherwise.

Tax money is taken by force; there is no option not to pay. Therefore, it's unjust to spend it on anything that is not necessary.

If you think that one of the problems here, is that I just don't understand what is necessary; you're right. Whether that comes from stupidity or ignorance makes no difference really, if I'm going to be allowed to exist as a citizen.

But if the answer is to pay your taxes and suck it, you've sort of created a peasant class, haven't you?

The government shouldn't have to borrow, the treasury should instead print the money.

YIKES!!!

I hope you're alone in that belief, but just in case you're not...

The only thing that gives money greater value than a piece of paper is that it's rare, and our government says it's legal tender. When you just "print more money" you reduce the value of EVERY dollar out there. Say there are 100 dollars in the world. If you print another 100, your not suddenly twice as wealth. You have the same amount of wealth, it's just that each of your 200 dollars are now worth half as much

So let's think about the consequences of this... When the government prints $1T, it make YOUR dollars and MY dollars and everyone else's dollars worth less. It really functions as a hidden tax on people with savings - aka, the middle class. It's artificial inflation, aka currency manipulation. You know, that thing we constantly complain that China does? Haven't heard us complain about that much lately, I bet...

BTW, last month, the Fed announced that we'll be printing $40B per month ($480B/yr) indefinitely. Ouch.

The U.S. budget deficit was $1.299 trillion last year, and I'm sure that for every dollar, you can find someone, somewhere, who thinks it was a dollar wisely spent. Eventually we're going to have to start making some choices, and "all of the above" won't be an option. My gut (and U.S. demographic data) tells me that when it comes to funding Medicare or the NEA, Medicare will win. And it doesn't matter that the NEA is a "drop in the bucket", because there are tens of thousands of drops in the bucket that will be low on the priority list in the grand scheme of things.

The problem with this argument is that "drop in the bucket cuts" are just that, and there are not enough of them to make any perceptible difference in the overall budget. Any cuts that will matter have to be in large line items.

Given the rate of spending in the US, and the amount of time the senator spent finding this $0.5 million grant, he wasted more money finding the grant to criticize than was spent on the grant in the first place.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

The problem is that governments use that little raise taxes strategy far more often than they actually cut spending. Resulting in numerous other fees and taxing absolutely everything.

You can't get blood from a rock.

Which of course explains why US federal taxes, by any objective measure, are at an all-time low . . . .

The federal government, in my little-L-libertarian opinion, is designed to handle the functions that the private sector cannot, either through practical necessity as a function of social or economic governance or an inability for the private sector to self-regulate because of market imbalances.

While I don't agree with your conclusion, I completely agree with the above sentiment. The private sector will surely invest in foreseeable profitable things. Sure some may even invest in nonprofitable ventures, but that's not guaranteed. It's up to the federal government to invest in its people and their ideas by handing out grants to wacky or fantastic ideas. Yes there needs to be a filter to remove the hoaxes and frauds, but that's already in place. These grants fund research projects, pays smart people to research and grow their ideas. Even if most of these ideas don't go anywhere, the few that do will pay for the rest. Think Google or Yahoo. Think of all the smart people coming to this country to get a PhD. It's paying for talent and keeping it in this country. It's paying to keep America at the forefront of technology.

Yes you could raise taxes but what happens if the after affects are that tax revenues go down? Historically total tax receipts by the federal government amounted to about 15 to 18% of GDP, whenever receipts go above that level the public gets restless, the last time this happened was the republican 'revolution' in 94. Right now, due to poor economic conditions we are trending closer to 15%, but you need to remember that it is with tax structure in place that yielded around 18% prior to recession. There is really no way that raising taxes will work the way you hope or expect in my opinion. The risk of capital flight is a very real possibility, while China isn't a very attractive option, what about Brazil, Chile, South Korea, or any number of other nations?

And if you still aren't convinced than just think about Romneys 47% comment. In any other time in the last few decades those remarks would have been an election killer. But it has hardly made any real lasting impact; Romney is running neck and neck with Obama according to the Rasmussen poll. This points to, though certainly alone doesn't support, that there are a significant number of Americans that are tired of taxes, period. You can talk about the 1% and the fat cats all you want, but it doesn't change that fact; and Americans tend to mistrust class warfare style politicking anyways. Not to mention blame can be shared around the political spectrum, neither Obama nor Bush can claim to have clean hands here.

We could liquify all of our assets today and we would not have enough money to pay for the entitlements we have promised. Yes military spending is a problem, yes government waste is a problem, but solving those alone do not solve the real problem we are in. We have written checks larger than what we can concievably cash and we cannot write anymore debt to cover our promises. No amount of partisan bickering or deflecting will change that fact. The cutting needs to start now, even if its just drops in the bucket, because it will be much less painful if we do it now voluntarily, rather than having this forced on us later.

Prom night is still a better use of tax payer money than the current welfare system. Of course I doubt they bothered mentioning welfare in his waste book. A system that encourages people not to work rather than rewarding even modest efforts while leaving the lazy to fend for themselves can't be a waste of money.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

If we had a roaring economy, then yeah, it would be pretty obvious. Raising taxes takes money out of the economy; lowering them puts money in. That's simple economics, there's no getting around it. You can talk about investment and shit, but that takes years to pay off.

As far what matters this next year; you got taxes and interest rates. Well, we used to have interest rates to play with. But they went to 0% under Bush, and are still stuck there.

Remember the Dems commercial this past summer? "Reagan cut taxes twice, but raised them 9 times." Both parties missed the actual lesson(s) on that one.

Video games are great. Many are artistic. Many are functional. They are undoubtedly changing the way that future generations behave in social situations. They improve logic and deductive reasoning in capacities we haven't seen before. That doesn't mean the government needs to be in the business of spending tax dollars on that section.

The federal government, in my little-L-libertarian opinion, is designed to handle the functions that the private sector cannot, either through practical necessity as a function of social or economic governance or an inability for the private sector to self-regulate because of market imbalances. The video game industry is 1) not a function of social/economic governance, and 2) quite capable of self-regulation.

The practical benefits that these government projects have created, are they well worth the cost? More importantly, are they acting at least as efficiently as the private sector at providing improvement? How does America's Army stack up to Call of Duty or Medal of Honor in terms of integrating military and video games? If the government is developing game controllers for unmanned recon operations, why do so many remote vehicles use an X-Box controller instead?

Sure, we care about video games. A lot of people care about Sesame Street and PBS. Others care about public accessibility to healthcare. But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period. That means people have to make sacrifices about government funding regarding the things that they care about. And video games, like Sesame Street and healthcare and numerous other "important" issues, aren't going to disappear just because the federal government isn't funding them. Some may stagnate, and others may be worse hit than others, but I just can't buy that video games deserve immunity from federal budget cuts because of their paramount importance to American federalism.

I know this is already the Editor's Pick, but I just have to say: This is one of the most well-written, articulated and positively argued comments (and, IMO, best arguments overall even in direct comparison with Ars Staff) I've ever read on this site. I might sound as though I'm exaggerating, but I'd honestly like to read some articles written by this dude. Ars, you should give this guy a job.

But the only way to balance the budget is to spend less money, period.

If you're saying that we must spend less money to get a balanced budget, I agree. If you're saying that the only technique that can move us closer is reduced spending then you're flat wrong. There is the simple, and obvious, raise taxes.

The problem is that governments use that little raise taxes strategy far more often than they actually cut spending. Resulting in numerous other fees and taxing absolutely everything.

You can't get blood from a rock.

Which of course explains why US federal taxes, by any objective measure, are at an all-time low . . . .

And spending by any objective measure is at an all time high. If no one wants to accept spending cuts why should I accept tax increases to pay for everyones bullshit? We have a spending problem not a revenue problem.

It's going to take a pretty damn large tax increase to pay for all the BS we pay for in terms of defense and unchecked entitlements.

My gut (and U.S. demographic data) tells me that when it comes to funding Medicare or the NEA, Medicare will win. And it doesn't matter that the NEA is a "drop in the bucket", because there are tens of thousands of drops in the bucket that will be low on the priority list in the grand scheme of things.

they could throw out the entire bucket and it wouldn't do anything as long as we spend as much on the military as the rest of the world combined and fail to implement any meaningful healthcare reforms.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.